University of Virginia Library

My first, best friends were British. They still are, and so far from finding fault that I favor the Boers, they exult that I dare for the right. They are the better class of British. England's best friends to-day are those who deplore this assault on the farmer Boers, so like ourselves a century back. Could any man be found strong enough to stay her hand, with sword or pen, in this mad hour, that man would deserve her lasting gratitude. This feeling holds in England as well as here. Take for example the following from her ablest thinker to a friend in America:—

“I rejoice that you and others are bent on showing that there are some among us who think the national honor is not being enhanced by putting down the weak. Would that age and ill health did not prevent me from aiding. No one can deny that at the time of the Jameson Raid the aim of the Outlanders and the raiders was to usurp the Transvaal government, and he must be willfully blind who does not see what the Outlanders failed to do by bullets they hope presently to do by votes, and only those who, while jealous of their own independence, regard but little the independence of people who stand in their way, can fail to sympathize with the Boers in their resistance to political extinction. It is sad to see our government backing those whose avowed policy is expansion, which, less politely expressed, means aggression, or which there is a still less polite word readily guessed. On behalf of these, the big British Empire, weapon in hand, growls out to the little Boer republic, ‘Do as I bid you.’ I have always thought that nobleness is shown in treating tenderly those who are relatively feeble and even sacrificing on their behalf something to which there is a just claim. But if current opinion is right, I must have been wrong.—